Business of the House

Chris Philp Excerpts

Thursday 12th September 2024 Commons Chamber

[Chris Philp (Croydon South) (Con)]

Will the Leader of the House provide a statement about forthcoming business?

[The Leader of the House of Commons (Lucy Powell)]

The business for the week commencing 7 October is as follows:

Monday 7 October—General debate on Lord Darzi’s independent investigation into NHS performance.

Tuesday 8 October—Opposition day (2nd allotted day). Debate on a motion in the name of the official Opposition; subject to be announced.

Wednesday 9 October—Second Reading of the Renters’ Rights Bill.

Thursday 10 October—As well as my birthday, a general debate on sport, following the Team GB and ParalympicsGB successes.

Friday 11 October—The House will not be sitting.

The provisional business for the week commencing 14 October will include:

Monday 14 October—Second Reading of the Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Bill.

Tuesday 15 October—Second Reading of the House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill.

Wednesday 16 October—Opposition day (3rd allotted day). Debate on a motion in the name of the Liberal Democrats; subject to be announced.

Thursday 17 October—General debate; subject to be announced.

Friday 18 October—The House will not be sitting.

[Chris Philp]

The business announced for the first week back strikes me as extraordinarily light. There is only a single piece of substantive Government business and half the time will be taken up with general debate. This “Government of service” seem to be taking it pretty easy. In fact, after 70 days, only 13 Bills have been introduced. I looked up the record of the previous Government. I discovered that they introduced 31 new Bills in 100 days following the 2019 election. The right hon. Lady has quite a lot of work to do in the next 30 days, if she is going to catch up with Boris Johnson.

Millions of pensioners are sick with worry following the vote earlier this week to strip them of the winter fuel allowance, including pensioners in poverty. I acknowledge and recognise the 53 courageous Labour MPs who did not support that appalling measure, but the other 350 did vote for it. I join the Leader of the Opposition in urgently calling on the Government to publish the impact assessment.

On 8 July, in a speech to the civil service, the Prime Minister said that his Government would be “open and transparent”. Where is the openness and transparency here? The only impact assessment that we have seen is the Labour party’s own impact assessment suggesting that the policy would cause 3,850 deaths. I call on the Leader of the House to do the decent thing and publish that impact assessment. This is not so much a Government of service as a Government of secrecy.

I also call for an urgent debate on the management of the early release scheme for prisoners. The Justice Secretary came to this House on 25 July and promised us that the “worst violent and sexual” offenders would be “excluded”—I am quoting her words directly. She also promised that domestic abuse offenders would be excluded. I am sorry to say to the House that that is not what has happened. The Napo general secretary, Ian Lawrence, says:

“Members have shared examples where those with both Domestic Violence offences and Sexual Offences have been released”.

He goes on to say that his members—prison officers—

“are extremely disappointed that this has been denied during several media appearances by Government ministers”.

He calls on the Government to correct the record, and I call on the Leader of the House to do so now: to correct the record and correct the inaccurate information that her colleagues have provided to the public.

Some of the examples of those being released early, contrary to the assurances that the Justice Secretary gave to this House, are appalling. Lawson Natty, age 20, who is due for early release, provided the machete that was used to kill 14-year-old Gordon Gault, whose mother describes herself as “sickened” by the early release. Adam Andrews, who is also due for early release, brutally assaulted a 21-day-old baby, leaving that baby blind and paralysed. We were promised that serious violent offenders would not be released early. That promise appears to have been broken. Not a Government of service; a Government of shameful incompetence.

It has been 70 days since the election and it has been a pretty terrible start to government: pensioners in poverty have been stripped of their winter fuel allowance, while there are inflation-busting pay rises for train drivers who already earn £65,000 a year; Labour party donors have been appointed to civil service positions; and there has been the botched release of prisoners, contrary to promises made to this House that violent offenders would not be released early. No wonder the Government’s approval ratings have plummeted at what, as far as I can see, is the fastest rate for any Government in modern times. The rates now stand at minus 36%. But not to worry: the Government do have one new supporter. Mr Djaber Benallaoua says that he will now be “a lifelong Labour voter”. The only problem is that he is a convicted drug dealer who is very happy about his early release. Not so much a Government of service as a Government for their donors, for their trade union paymasters, and for violent criminals who they promised would not be released early, but who they did in fact release.

[Lucy Powell]

May I start by welcoming the news that the Princess of Wales has completed her chemotherapy and is moving on to the next stage of her recovery? Like you, Mr Speaker, I place on the record my thanks to the Speaker’s Chaplain, the Venerable Patricia Hillas, in her final week. We thank her for her contribution to this House.

I congratulate all the newly elected Select Committee Chairs; they play a very important role in this House. I also send my regards to Terry Wiggins, who has served us as a chef for an astonishing 50 years. We all know Terry as the mainstay of the Debate, and I am sure that he will miss serving up the famous House of Commons jerk chicken. I know that he is looking forward to having more time for walking with his dogs. They must be the best-fed dogs in the country.

This week, for the first time in 14 years, a Labour Bill became an Act. The Budget Responsibility Act 2024 ensures that there can never again be a repeat of Liz Truss’s disastrous mini-Budget. It comes as we grapple with the £22 billion black hole left by the Conservative party—what a stark reminder that is of the importance of economic stability.

The theme this week is the Government honouring their commitment to all those who have been let down. We have published the Renters’ Rights Bill, which will finally end no-fault evictions—a measure long promised but never realised. In order to help unlock town centre regeneration, we have begun reform of outdated compulsory rules—levelling up, remember that? And to the workers of Port Talbot Steel left hanging by the previous Government, the Business and Trade Secretary announced a new deal, welcomed by workers and their representatives.

Today, we introduce the Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Bill, otherwise known as Martyn’s law, meeting a promise that the Prime Minister made to Figen Murray, who lost her son Martyn Hett in the Manchester arena attack. I am personally delighted that we are doing this today. This is a Government of service, delivering their manifesto, sticking to their promises and cleaning up the mess left by the Conservative party.

Work began this week on another commitment that we made, with the first meeting of the Modernisation Committee. I thank Members from across the House who have joined and contributed to the process so far, including the shadow Leader of the House and the hon. Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope), who is taking his membership very seriously indeed. This morning, the Committee published a memorandum setting out its core principles and early priorities, and I encourage Members from across the House to take a look at that.

We seem to be developing a common theme in these exchanges. The Conservatives lost the election badly because they crashed the economy, made people worse off and did not fix the foundations of this country. The shadow Leader of the House seems to think that we can just carry on as we were, but we saw that movie and it did not end well.

The shadow Leader of the House asks me about the prisons crisis—[Interruption.] Okay, he say it was the management of the prisoner release scheme. Let us just remember that we inherited from the Conservatives prisons on the point of collapse. After the riots, we came within 100 places of our prisons overflowing. If we had not acted, courts would not have been able to hold trials and the police would not have been able to make arrests. Our entire criminal justice system was on the brink of collapse. Police chiefs warned his Government that failing to act before the election would increase the risk considerably, including the risk of serious disorder. What did his Government do? Absolutely nothing. We took the difficult decisions that we had to in order to ensure that our prisons and the whole criminal justice system did not collapse. The previous Government ducked the big issues, as ever; we acted. I will not take any lectures from him about that.

I notice that the shadow Leader of the House did not ask me about the NHS. The damning findings of the Darzi report, out this morning, are another utterly unforgiveable example of the state of public services that we inherited from the Conservative party. The true scale of the crisis in our NHS, experienced by all our constituents, family and friends every day, has been laid bare this morning. Does he want to take the opportunity to apologise for that? No, I did not think he would.

I also notice that the shadow Leader of the House did not repeat the claim that he often makes that the previous Government left us a booming economy. Is that because yesterday’s growth figures confirmed what we all know: that under his party’s watch, we had no growth, falling living standards and a stagnant economy? That is the legacy of his party, and he knows it.

We are fixing the foundations and stabilising the economy. That is why the Conservatives lost and we won. We will not put our heads in the sand. We are keeping our promises—to renters, to steelworkers, and, today, to Figen Murray—and restoring the trust in politics squandered by the Conservative party. This is the change that the country voted for, and the change that we are delivering.